Come Home: A Study in Grief
by Jean Hicks
Summary: "It's raining, Sherlock." "I have an umbrella." :: 7 years after the Fall, John returns to London fighting a war against new demons. A character study in grief for both Sherlock and John, may seem a bit out of character at times, but this is how I imagine them handling their separate griefs. Has a happy ending, I promise. Johnlock. R&R. Thanks!


**A/N:** Passed my undergrad thesis defense and successfully moved! Whoo! Someone had requested a fic from Reapersun's image (the cover for this story) before I had finished all my academics, and I told them when I got done I'd write it... so here it is! Set about 7-8 years after the Fall, Sherlock has returned, John has left London and married Mary. Supposed to have been short and fluffy, but you know me, I take any prompt and beat angst into it. Everything that follows is a result... R&R and Enjoy!

* * *

He sits inside the café and he watches the traffic on the street. His coffee has gone cold, with the creamer settled on top because he never really even stirred it in. People bustle by with their shopping, umbrellas open to the afternoon rain. He stares across the road to the front of a flat, a flat he once called home. He wants so badly to walk across the street, knock on the door… he wants so badly to go home again.

But it has been seven years. Seven years since he last saw Baker Street. Sherlock has been back for four of those years, and John can't help but think that the flat would no longer be his home anyway. After all, hadn't he been the one to leave? To put London and Saint Bart's and all the messy business that was Sherlock Holmes behind him? Seven years… he had married. Had a son.

And now they were gone.

It had been a car crash, of all the simplistic things. No drunk drivers, no sob stories, just an exhausted mother on the way home with a crying baby in the back. She swerved, hit an oncoming truck. John was working late at the A&E. He heard her screams first. There was nothing he could do for either of them. Some doctor he was.

Two months ago he had given up his post at the hospital and returned to London, hoping the city streets that had been so good at comforting the nightmares of the war would soothe this new set. He had no friends, no place to go, so he spent his free time sitting across the street from the one place in London he knew he would find peace, hoping the proximity would be enough.

"Do you actually intend to drink your coffee, John?"

John is startled out of his memories, rounding on the person who had disturbed him. His eyes widen as he took in the sight of Sherlock Holmes who stands before him grasping the walnut hook of a slick black umbrella. He has just come in the door, if the damp on the fabric was to be believed, and John hadn't even seen him.

"Ah… yes… Sherlock…" He stutters, plastering a fake smile across his face. "Wasn't expecting to run into you here!"

"Yes you were." He says it without any gloating or pride. In fact, he seems a bit sad. John's face falls and Sherlock glances about. "The coffee here is terrible, and as you've been sitting here every afternoon for two weeks I would imagine you've had enough of it. Come across to the flat, I'm sure Mrs. Hudson would love to see you."

"And you?" John asks in a small voice.

"And I what, John?"

"Would you like to see me too then?"

Sherlock does not answer. He toys his bottom lip with his teeth and flexes his gloved hand around the umbrella. John tries very hard not to stare.

When Sherlock had returned, Mycroft had driven him out to Lincolnshire where he bombarded John at the A&E and demanded that he return London. John, initially shocked and then very angry, yelled a bit. Sherlock yelled back.

"I need you." Sherlock finally declared.

"If you needed me, Sherlock Holmes, you would have never have left. I have a wife, now, Sherlock. She needs me. So why don't you just… sod off and leave me alone."

As if stabbed in the side with a sharp knife, Sherlock straightened. His face was blank. Mycroft, who had been waiting silently by the large black car, stepped forward. He looked disappointed. "If that's the way of it then." Sherlock said.

"It is…" John replied, his voice tight around the words. He squared his shoulders, walked away before he could watch Mycroft drive away with Sherlock watching out the window, face pressed to the glass like a child, tears streaming down his face.

They hadn't spoken since.

"I understand the flat might be a bit much at the moment, John, but perhaps we could just go for a walk?" Sherlock again, back in the present day.

"It's raining, Sherlock." John says, but there wasn't really an argument in his voice.

"I have an umbrella."

* * *

They walk down the road, shoulder to shoulder, without saying much of anything. In the end it is Sherlock who speasks first.

"When Mycroft told me what had happened…" He starts and then swallows hard. "I'm so very sorry, John."

Unsurprisingly, the huge lump that had formed in his throat anytime someone mentioned Mary and Hamish returns. "It was an accident." His voice is rough but he can at least talk. "You didn't do it…" _I did_… he thinks, _I was the one who couldn't save them._

"I know." The rain beats a rhythm on the umbrella. "There was nothing you could have done, John." There it was, Sherlock's uncanny ability to read John's mind without any more than a glance. John's shoulders tensed.

"She was alive… alive when she came into the A&E…" He clenches and unclenches his fist. Talking like this hurt, being near Sherlock hurt… God, how it hurt. He didn't want to face any more hurt. His face clouds in anger. "How do you know anyway, Sherlock?"

"I had Lestrade call for the files when I saw you were around London again. You quit your job because you found yourself to be a failure…I had to know the truth. I read every angle of the accident John. She was going too fast, there wasn't any way she could have ever survived. The same goes for Hamish…"

"Don't." John ground out around his teeth. "Don't you dare say his name!"

"I thought…"

"Thought what, Sherlock?" John has stopped walking now, standing two paces away from Sherlock in the pouring rain. He didn't care. "Thought you could come and play the sycophant. That I would be broken enough to move back in? That we could become mates again over the bodies of my dead family?" He was shouting. Sherlock stood under his umbrella, passive, all signs of sympathy erased from his face.

"You need me, John. You know that is the truth."

"You're awfully sure of yourself." John spits, the fire in his chest burning hot. He had a startling urge to throw Sherlock's smug face into the pavement, to make him bleed, to make him hurt like he hurt right now. "No. You know what? Screw you, Sherlock Holmes."

John turns on his heel and runs. He is determined to put as much distance between him and Sherlock as possible. How had he thought Baker Street would bring him peace? He was angry now, angrier than he had been in months, years even. So he runs… he runs as fast as he could leaving Sherlock standing alone, a pair of ice cold eyes in the pouring rain.

* * *

"These things take time, Sherlock." Mycroft says, placing a cup of tea on the coffee table next to the sofa. His brother is wrapped in his bathrobe, back to the world, pouting. "You can't expect him to be ready to jump back into the fray with the drop of a hat, brother. He will come around, and if he doesn't, then such is the way of things."

Sherlock is silent, glaring at the pillow.

"You must remember that he has lost everything and everyone he ever truly cared about." Mycroft says after a while.

"He hasn't lost me." The body on the couch finally huffs and turns around to face the elder Holmes. Mycroft smirks slightly and then stands from the chair.

"Hasn't he?"

* * *

_[15:32] Dinner? –SH_

_[15:34] Sod off._

_[16:00] Have you anything better to do? –SH_

_[16:30] What do you care? I'm not answering again._

_[17:54] I do care John… -SH_

_[17:54] Message could not be received._

* * *

"No one but Mycroft has gone in for months. I haven't seen him at all." Mrs. Hudson hands him a cup of tea and he wraps his tired hands around its warmth. "Just sits up there and sulks, won't even play the violin anymore."

John came to see Mrs. Hudson, he tells himself this as he sips the tea. He stopped responding to Sherlock's texts two months ago, ignored his phone calls for the month after that, and managed to avoid him when he tried to follow John onto the Tube. Now Sherlock has stopped calling, texting, anything. Lestrade hasn't heard from him, said he hasn't solved a case in at least half a year. Molly kept trying to bring him supper or spare body parts from the morgue, but Sherlock wouldn't answer the door. Eventually, it seems, everyone gave up.

He tells himself that it was a desire to see Mrs. Hudson that brought him to 221B, not a concern for Sherlock Holmes. This is a lie, but he continues to tell himself the lie because it makes his heart hurt less. They make idle chit chat until the tea is gone and the conversation loops, inevitably, back to the man upstairs.

"When he came back… well, when he found out you'd left London he was heartbroken." John smirks. "I'm serious, John… it's like his whole world had fallen apart."

"Yea, I bet." He can't keep the bitterness out of his voice.

"What he did, he did for us, John. Didn't he ever tell you that?" She places a hand on his shoulder and takes his empty tea cup. "We'd have all been dead if not for him."

John is silent a moment and then he looks up at Mrs. Hudson. "He's not an angel in all of this." He states simply.

"No…" She agrees with a small, sad smile. "But he's not the devil either."

* * *

Sherlock sits with his back pressed against the wood of the door and listens to John gather his coat to leave. He wants to stand up, run down to the door, stop him from leaving again, but he can't. His legs are frozen and his heart is frozen and his eyes are frozen. He's thinner now than he's ever been. His world has lost color, and he doesn't care. His mind is slow, stagnant, weak…

Sherlock Holmes does not claim to know much about love. He would not claim to love Mummy, and he definitely did not love Father. Perhaps he loves Mycroft, but that's in the family sort of way. He thought he loved a man in university, but it never felt like this and the man wasn't interested in Sherlock's love anyway. However, John had been different.

John had been loyal and true and magnificent. While hunting down Moriarty's henchmen, he often thought of John and jumpers and tea, particularly how all of the running and the fighting and the lying would be worth it when he got to go home… home to John. When Sherlock returned and found John no longer in London, he had felt a sinking feeling in his chest; yet he was stubborn, and despite Mycroft's warnings he tried to bring John back.

Obviously John had not wanted to come back. Like a petulant child denied his favorite plaything, Sherlock pouted and mourned and then decided to live 'just fine without John, thank you very much.' It lasted almost five years, until Sherlock caught wind that John was _back_ in London (yes—family tragedy, all very sad) and he figured that yes, finally he could have John back and life could be normal. The pieces in his head would fall into place again, and the world would gain some color back and they could laugh. God, Sherlock hadn't laughed in years.

Of course he knows the dictionary definition of love, but that falls flat in the face of reality: The hole in his chest that cannot be filled with solving cases or cocaine or research. The tears that fall from his eyes when he catches the end of a particular television program John used to like. The loneliness that grips his heart and stops him dead in his tracks. He doesn't know where that falls into the definition of love.

He knows he is pitiful. He knows he shouldn't be pining so, that it is so unlike him he should be disgusted. The thing is, Sherlock is so used to not feeling that it burns him to feel so deeply for John Watson. He knows not whether that burn is passionate love or panicked obsession.

* * *

Mycroft has to force the door open because Sherlock has fallen asleep in front of it. He cradles his brother's too-thin body and lays him out on the couch. There are tear tracks on his face and snot underneath his nose. He thinks he looks rather undignified. Sherlock's grey eyes open as Mycroft wipes about his face with his silk handkerchief. He expects to be pushed away, scolded for cradling him so when they are two grown men. Sherlock merely looks at him, lost as a child, fresh tears on his face. "Why does it burn so badly, My?"

The childhood name makes Mycroft pull Sherlock in even further, determined to shelter him like he did all those years ago. Sherlock clings to his shirt with a weak hand. Mycroft says nothing, holds him tight. He knows John can't be expected to want Sherlock, but he sees with an outsider's eye that each is in desperate need of the other. "I don't understand…" Sherlock says eventually, making no move to unhand his brother, as if Mycroft is the anchor to his reality at the moment.

"You've gone thirty years without a broken heart, Sher, it's perfectly logical that this one would be immensely painful."

"I think I should have stayed dead…" The tears run again and Mycroft understands without asking. He is sobbing again, the last pains of man starved of oxygen, forbidden to have the one thing he needs to survive. Sherlock's heart isn't just broken for John. He is tired for sleep that will not come, hungry and thirsty for things he never knew he needed until now. His mind is at a breaking point, closing itself down to prevent further pain.

"Oh, Sherlock…" Mycroft says softly, hand rested in his brother's shaking hair. "My dear Sherlock…" Silently, he vows that this must all come to an end.

* * *

The black car is not entirely unexpected. He tries his best to ignore it, but curiosity gets the best of him and then he's being swept off by another nameless assistant to God-knows-where. Meetings with Mycroft Holmes were always a little bit exciting.

They stop in an abandoned parking garage. The assistant motions John out of the door and the car drives away. Mycroft is waiting in the dim green light, leaning heavily on his umbrella. He looks tired, John thinks before he can stop himself.

"Dr. Watson."

"Mycroft."

The thunder rumbles outside. It's threatening to rain again.

"So, what can I say is the occasion?"

"My brother is not well." Mycroft says, his eyes holding none of the kindness they usually do. "And I cannot allow this to continue." John opens his mouth to reply, but Mycroft cuts across him quickly. "He is broken. I understand that you have been through hard times, Doctor, but so has he."

"And that makes it your job to fix him up then?" There's little fire in John's words, but he isn't quite ready to admit that Mycroft is right.

"Sherlock is _always_ my job." Mycroft takes a step closer, "His well-being is my only true purpose." This is the Mycroft Holmes that could kill, John realizes. But John has always been a brave man, a stupid man…

"Ah, so it makes sense that you would sell him out Moriarty." He manages a smirk.

The older Holmes is on him before he can register his weight, strong hands have ahold of his collar and are throwing him to the asphalt wall behind him. His weight is solid, eyes fierce. Hadn't Sherlock said Mycroft wasn't one for getting his hands dirty? Lightning strikes outside and the thunder echoes around the garage, almost drowning out the sound of the venomous voice in his ear.

"I do not often take such base measures, but you, Dr. Watson, have hurt the Holmes enough…" His hand closes around John's throat. He struggles for a moment, hands trying to find purchase on the soft fabric of the fancy suit. A moment passes and John realizes that he can still breathe, it's just painful. Mycroft isn't intending to kill him… yet anyway… "Let me tell you how this will be." Mycroft accentuates the statement with an increase of pressure to his hyoid bone. "You will either make an effort to be civil to my brother, or you will leave London. Permanently."

"Stop." Sherlock's voice cuts above the storm outside and Mycroft releases the pressure on John's neck. He steps back, dusts his suit, and turns to face his brother.

"Sherlock, I thought you were at home." The control is falling back on Mycroft's face. John has a hand circled round his neck, rubbing at a tender spot.

"I fancied a walk."

"It's raining…"

"I have an umbrella." He takes a few steps closer to the pair of them. "As much as I am thankful for you, Mycroft, you don't have to bully my…" He pauses, "Friends." There is silence and then another roll of thunder.

"You're crazy. The lot of you!" John says finally as he turns towards the exit of the garage.

"I was only trying to help, Sherlock."

"And you have helped quite enough, Mycroft. Let me handle this now, please, brother..."

* * *

John is walking down the sidewalk in the rain for four minutes before he realizes he has no idea where he is. He stops and looks around, runs a hand around his face. "John!" He hears from the distance.

Sherlock is all awkward limbs, running towards him with the umbrella above his head and his coat flying out behind him. When he stops in front of John he's toying with his lip again. He reaches a hand up without thinking and runs it along the red mark on John's throat. "That will bruise." He says softly, and then he doesn't take his hand away. John swallows. "My brother has been at his limit… I've been… a bit hard to handle. Please forgive him."

"Just a bit?" John says with a genuine smile. Forgiving Mycroft is already done. He does know a thing or two about being a protective sibling, and while he may not appreciate Mycroft's behavior, he understands it.

"Like you've been much better." Sherlock turns his head and John can see a fresh bruise across his cheekbone. John runs a thumb across the spot, the skin is warm despite the chilling rain. "Harry." Sherlock says before he can ask. "Came by the flat yesterday. She was determined she was going to set me straight."

"Imagine that!"

"Said you'd been moping about for months… which would be expected given the loss of your family but… she says it's been a year now, and I'd been the only thing you'd really been talking about."

It was now John's turn to fiddle with his lower lip. "Sherlock… I…" He sighed. "No…" He shakes his head. "I was so caught up in anger, first over you being gone and then Mary and… I just let it eat at me. I treated you poorly. I refused to forgive you. It wasn't fair to take out all my anger on you."

Sherlock smiles a little, "I made myself an easy target. I expected things to just go back the way they were, the Detective and his Blogger, freed from all the nasty complications of marriages and families. I was… extremely callous." His hand is still on John's neck, gentle and warm. "I thought… I thought you might have liked to come home."

John isn't sure what he's feeling, but he's huddled under the umbrella in the rain with Sherlock and he thinks he might feel the fires of anger dying inside of him. "God, Sherlock… it was all I wanted. After Mary, the nightmares, every day I sat across from the flat and it was all I wanted."

"And then you didn't come home, when I gave you the chance."

"I figured… you had left before…" John sighs and leans closer to Sherlock's touch

"You were afraid."

"Yes. I lost you, and I told myself I'd never love again. Then there was Mary and I wasn't trying to fall in love but it happened… and then my baby boy. I thought I would be full of love forever. Next thing you know they were gone and I was seeing you again and I hated the fact that you were still alive." He turns away.

"Don't." Sherlock says suddenly. "Don't turn away, John. I understand… or at least, I'm trying." He forces John back to look at him and there are tears running down the doctor's cheek.

"You said you loved me?" John nods, Sherlock brushes each new tear away with his thumb. "I'm… I'm not sure if I can…"

"I wouldn't expect…"

"No. Let me finish." Sherlock swallows. "I'm not _good_ at these sorts of things, John. I don't have any romantic notion of love. Cards and flower and poetry, it's all boring and dull. When you're not around, when I can't have you, it's like there's a hole in my chest that won't fill properly. My brain is slow. My world lacks color and reason and no amount of work or money or friendship will fix it. I need my blogger. If that's not love…"

His voice stops. John has wrapped his arms snuggly around Sherlock's middle and is looking up at him. He's never claimed to be good at this sort of thing, but he bends his head down and kisses him. Soft and sweet and forgiving, standing under a black and walnut umbrella in the pouring rain.

"Sounds like love to me." John says when they break the kiss. Sherlock has a hand around John's back and they are still millimeters apart. The detective breathes out as John breathes in. For the first time since Mary (since the Fall?), the fire of anger in John's heart has quieted- still there, yes, but soothed by Sherlock's hot breath. Sherlock feels the hole in his chest slam shut as John lays his head down over his heart. They sigh contentedly. The thunder has gone.

"Say you'll come home, John… please… come home…"

"Oh God, yes." John replies before Sherlock swallows his breath with another kiss.


End file.
